Joe Becker

I was borne the eldest child of Mississippi sharecroppers back in the summer of eighteen-aut-six, when the air was dry, the sun was hot, and the wind threatened to tear the very flesh off'n your bones. It were a dark time, a hard time, a time for . . .

OK, those are lies. I was born in North Dakota, not Mississippi. My parents weren't sharecroppers (though my father was a farmer). And I was born on September 28, 1982, not whatever the heck it was I said earlier. Sorry 'bout leading you on like that. I try to amuse myself.

I was raised in the blink-and-you'll-miss-it town of Napoleon, ND--you know, the kind of town with one cemetary, two gas stations, three churches and four bars--until 1989, when my parents packed up my siblings and I and moved to the big city of Bismarck, ND. Well, big by comparison, anyway. There I lived until I graduated high school, when I took my academic scholarship and went off to find my way in the big bad world of higher education.

Two years and a healthy chunk of change later, I realized college was two things: 1) Not for me, and 2) Undoubtedly the biggest racket in the history of the United States. Seriously, worse than the mob. So I dropped out and moved back to Bismarck (not into my parents' house, however, I do have some pride). This time, I stayed only until the summer of 2005, when a friend and I drove across the better part of the country to work at a summer camp in the mountains outside of Marlinton, West Virginia. I served as the baseball specialist, teaching the game to kids aged anywhere from 6 to 17, many of whom had never even put on a glove before. (By the way, you haven't seen funny until you've watched the 12-year-old right-handed daughter of an United States senator try to throw a baseball with her left-hand. Also, you haven't known frustration until you've tried to explain to said girl why a right-handed person should wear a glove on his/her left hand. Just saying.)

While that summer was often frustrating and sometimes lonely, it still rates as one of the defining experiences in my life. Not just for the beautiful scenery, international counselors and campers, and mind-numbing humidity; but because it was the first time I had ever spent an extended period of time away from my family. True, I had gone off to college for a time, but even then I was never more than a four-hour drive away. In West Virginia, I was two full days of driving from home, and even the phones only worked when they wanted to. It's amazing how much you learn about yourself when you are quite literally forced to make your own way.

Moving on. After that summer, I moved back home long enough to celebrate Labor Day with my family, then promptly moved to Fargo, ND, where I live to this day. It's not a bad little city (or big town, depending on your reference point). In fact, if you take away the almost-constant wind, frequent stench of processing sugar beets, and bi-annual catastrophic spring floods, you might say Fargo is a heck of a place to live. Of course, you can't take all of that away, so I'll rate it a 6 out of 10. Maybe 6.5, depending on if winter lasts 5 months or less.

Here I live and work and write. Bartending pays the bills and feeds the body, writing sates the creative appetite and feeds the ego. I have one book in publication, the second almost completed (I plan on someday finishing the TFI series), a dusty old screenplay that I really should take another look through, no fewer than three short stories/novellas in various stages of completion, and any number of essays and op-ed pieces stashed away in my computer, most of which are about things that piss me off. Because everyone needs a hobby.

That's my life in the proverbial nutshell. Never really understood the "symbology" behind that (Boondock Saints fans, that was for you), but what can you do. Anyway, hope you had more fun reading this blatant self-promotion than I did writing it. Good day, and God bless.

--JB